New York Moment
by greyslostwho
Summary: Basically, Addison hates Christmas. Maddison fic.


**New York**** Moment**

**Summary: Basically, ****Addison**** hates Christmas.**

**Spoilers: Private Practice 309 & 310. Grey's Anatomy: Holidaze.**

**Disclaimer: Nope, still don't own it.**

**A/N: This is the first of my Christmas fic extravaganza… :) I hope you enjoy it. I AM SO PSYC****HED**** FOR THE C****ROSS****OVER, I LITERALLY CANNOT WAIT.**

**AAAAAAAAAAAAAAH**

Basically, Addison hates Christmas.

These days, anyway. There was a time, back in New York with Derek and his sisters and Mark and the flavour of the month and Christmas lights and smiles and roast turkey… she'd loved it then, when everything had been storybook perfect and it had even snowed… But these days, Christmas was for happy people. People in relationships, people with wedding rings, people who weren't completely barren. It didn't seem to _fit _anymore, not in Seattle, not in LA… there was no snow and the hospital was manic and they were awake for 72 hours or something ridiculous like that… Christmas didn't make her smile anymore. It made her groan.

She'd been putting off the task that was considering her options for Christmas Day. She would be invited home, of course she would, but a Christmas with Bizzy and the Captain was never great, and with the recent revelations in her family and the less-than-friendly note she'd left everything on with Archer, she supposed she'd make her usual excuses and back gracefully out of the Forbes-Montgomery Christmas Extravaganza. And of course Naomi would offer, but she wasn't sure how much of sitting around a table with Sam, Naomi and Maya she could hold out – she knew from first hand experience that the family's dirty laundry usually ended up airing over the melon appetiser…

She'd even been invited to Cooper's, for heaven's sake. And that was going to be awkward as hell, Cooper and Charlotte, still frosty with one another, and Violet, and Pete and Lucas, and Dell and Betsy… she suspected the little girl might be the only one she could talk any sense to over that meal.

She had even briefly entertained the thought of showing up in Seattle, mainly because she liked the look it put on Meredith Grey's face… she was never quite going to get over that, but it was a ridiculous idea from the start, and she quelled it. She'd considered staying home with Milo and drinking herself to oblivion, despite how sad that might sound, when Savvy had rung out of the blue and said that Addison hadn't spent nearly enough time with her little goddaughter in the few short years of her life and that little Grace-Addison wanted to spend Christmas with her namesake. Addison had tried to argue, but despite the fact that they had spent little time together in the past few years, Savvy still knew her too well. She'd demanded there and then that Addison come up to New York for Christmas.

She should never have agreed to that. New York held too many memories, memories of perfect Christmases, memories of horrid Christmases, memories of Derek, of Mark, of pain and adultery and bliss… Savvy and Weiss were as wonderful and accommodating as ever, but like with the Bennetts, she didn't fit into their perfect little family circle. Grace was small and blonde and her little baby brother was as adorable, but they were too much a reminder of what she couldn't have.

So that's how she found herself where she is right now. Walking through Central Park in the chill of Christmas morning, pretending it doesn't break her heart that no matter how many people surround her she's still completely alone.

There was another Christmas in Central Park, in the last year of her marriage. Derek was working the killer 48 hour shift at the hospital, and although she'd taken her turn the year before and she knew everyone had to do it, she was more worried by the fact that Derek seemed to have no qualms about not spending his Christmas Day with his wife, that Derek was fine with spending it cutting into people's brains, and he didn't even pretend to mind. She'd considered booking herself a shift too, but she was too vain, and people at the hospital were already starting to talk about the visible cracks appearing in her marriage, and she didn't want anyone to see the look of defeat on her face as she operating next to her husband when she should have been curled up by the fire with him, drinking egg-nog and being _normal._

She hadn't expected Mark to turn up on her doorstep on Christmas morning, but he had, smiling his usual down-trodden puppy smile that he gave her and holding a large box of Thai takeout. She hadn't said anything, simply ushered him through into the brownstone, kicking aside the empty vodka bottle far too late… the previous night had been a difficult one.

"What are you doing, Mark?"

He shrugged, smiling at the fact that she was wearing an old button down check shirt that had probably belonged to her grandfather or something, because neither Derek nor the Captain would have ever been seen dead in it…

"Spreading the Christmas cheer, I guess…" he shrugged again, his heart starting to beat too fast, like he knew he was somewhere he shouldn't be. "Caroline went back to her parents' for Christmas and New Year and I… uh… well, I wasn't invited…"

Maybe it was the lingering effects of the inebriated state she'd been in the night before, but Addison burst out laughing. Mark wasn't exactly the type you took home to meet your parents, and this probably meant that Caroline was on her way out… there'd be someone else by the end of January.

When her giggles subsided, she wiped her eyes and returned his bemused gaze, one eyebrow raised slightly in cocky sarcasm.

"So, Derek's working?" Mark said lamely, and the bright, albeit brief emotional rise she'd managed dissipated.

"It's busy at Christmas." She muttered, like Mark didn't know that, like it was any excuse. He could have gone on, he could have pointed out that it wasn't any excuse, that he was sure Derek had taken his turn at Christmas last year, but he didn't. He was all too aware what a comment like that would do to Addison, with her smudgy, tired eyes as it was, and the few extra lines in her face.

"Fancy a walk?" he whispered across the space between them, and she didn't think she'd ever heard a better idea.

The bench in Central Park, just around the corner, barely a few yards away – that's where it all began. They'd gone for a walk and sat down there and suddenly Addison had been sobbing into Mark's shoulder and when he'd finally pulled back it had only been to fuse their lips together, in desperate belief that he could make the redhead sat in front of him, the only woman he'd loved since the moment Derek had introduced him to his fiancé, feel a little better.

What followed was a tumultuous affair spanning eight months, and after they were discovered, six months of trying to make something _happen. _

And it had all begun on that bench, which is why she hates herself now as she deliberately rounds the corner, looking beyond the trees to see it.

And of course, because this is her screwed up, ironic life, there's someone sitting on it.

"Addison."

"Mark, I-" but she trails off, simply sitting beside him, not quite close enough to touch.

"I thought you'd be in LA."

She shakes her head. "I'm staying with Savvy and Weiss and the kids…"

"Merry Christmas." He breathes, and there's something dark in his tone.

The silence is full, the silence is thick, it's cold and dark.

"Why aren't you in Seattle, Mark?" She still doesn't call it _home. _It'll never be home, not for either of them. For moments the frosty silence lingers, and she thinks he isn't going to answer. She pulls her coat a little closer to her, shivering slightly, watching her breath cloud the air in front of their faces, mingling with his like it has a mind of its own.

"I'm a mess, Addison." He breathes bitterly, and her hand jumps out of her pocket of its own accord and takes his, which is stiff and clenched through his leather gloves. It doesn't occur to her for one minute the coincidence that is Mark, sitting on _their bench, _at exactly the same time she walks by. That's just _them._

She waits for him to elaborate, and eventually he does. "I… I have a daughter, and she's having a baby, and she's hardly much younger than Lexie, and I…" he trails off, staring at the leather and white cashmere fingers gripping one another. Addison swallows. This is about _Lexie, _not her, and she's lost the right a long time ago to be anything more than his friend. She knows that.

"I… I'm not the man I was when I was with you… I haven't cheated on her, I would never do that… and I really thought I loved her, I did, but…"

He turns slightly on the wooden seat so he can look into her face. The thought occurs to him in that moment that she'll never stop being beautiful, even now, with tired, make-up-less eyes and red cheeks from the cold and chapped lips, she'll always be the one thing that takes his breath away, as clichéd as that sounds.

"Do you think that sometimes you don't love someone enough, and eventually… eventually you just stop loving them…"

Addison is nodding, and she can feel her heart racing in her chest. She's not sure where he's coming from anymore. She's not sure whether they're talking about Lexie or something else entirely. He goes on.

"And there are some people… some people you just can't stop loving, no matter how hard you want to forget…"

She nods more vigorously at that. It's the mantra of her life. She'll always love Derek a little, she'll always love him, she'll always wish she made some different choices.

He hadn't noticed how close she was until the wind blew and her hair whipped across his face.

"I don't think I can love Lexie anymore." He whispers, but doesn't provide an example for his second theory. For a moment she thinks he's going to say something else, _do _something else, but he turns his head and looks away, out across Central Park.

The silence retreats into position again, and their fingers remained laced together.

"I'm completely alone." She breathes, and his eyes flicker back to hers. She hadn't meant the words to come out sounding quite so desperate, quite so helpless, but as always, he reads her like a book, and a thousand moments where he understood exactly how she was feeling flash through her mind, and his breath catches. When he speaks, the single word sounds strangled.

"No." he whispers, and without even consideration to the consequence, he leans forward and kisses her, taking her bottom lip roughly between his teeth, because he's _starving _for her, and no matter what he tries to tell himself, he always has been. She finds her other hand curling into the back of his hair, and she leans in, welcoming his arm around her waist, welcoming the proximity.

Mark pulls back, rests his forehead against hers.

"I'm not happy." He whispers, "I came here because… New York was where I was happiest…"

_Even though she was married to another man, _he realises, he was happiest in New York because he had some small part of her heart.

Her gloved thumb runs over his face, and her eyes are filling, and she's not sure it's just with the cold.

"I'm not happy." She echoes, but it feels like a lie, because in this very moment joy is bubbling under the surface, and she feels more alive than she had in a long time. She leans forward and kisses him again, her tongue dancing with his, and she remembers how comforting it is that they know each other's movements exactly, that they know one another so well. She doesn't want to consider the future, the next minutes, the next hours, the next days, the next years. She doesn't want to think about whether this will end here, on this bench, whether this is just her Christmas folly, or whether they'll go back to his hotel room before their extremities freeze into ice, and spend the rest of the day together, doing whatever it is they do best. She doesn't want to consider what will happen tomorrow, whether he'll go back to Seattle and they'll pretend to forget each other again, or whether this Christmas is the year everything changes. She threads her fingers through and through his, leaning against him, wishing that there was a way to extend this moment forever.

When he finally pulls back, his eyes are lit with questions.

**A/N: I know the ending's a bit ambiguous, but it felt right to leave it there! Think whatever you want, and Merry Christmas!**


End file.
